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Sunday, February 10, 2013

FATE Core Tekumel

Art c. M.A.R. Barker

I was finally able to complete my read-through of the FATE Core rules, including the Extras chapter, last night. Since I am running a Tekumel-based FATE Core scenario at Con of the North next Sunday, on 2/17, at 2 PM in the House of Indie Games, I have been thinking about how to design characters.

Some of my initial thoughts are as follows:

A character's clan will be a Extra, with both an Aspect and a skill rating

The actual clan name will be the Aspect for the character

"Clan" is the universal name of the Skill associated with this Aspect. The higher on the Skill Pyramid that Clan is placed, the higher the social status of the character's clan.

Since PCs on Tekumel are very much creatures of their clan in terms of their access to wealth and resources - with very few exceptions - the Clan skill will replace Resources. One exception to this is for very low status clans, such as slavers, who are often very Wealthy. In that case, their Wealth will be represented as a Stunt.

Magic will be treated rather abstractly. It will be split up into a number of magical Lores, based on a broad Skill categories, such as Body, Energy, or Necromancy. Specific very powerful spells, such as Doomkill, will be represented as Lore-related Stunts.

Magic will be tiring. At this time, I am thinking that the total Effort rolled accumulates as Stress - either Physical, Mental, or both. That should balance magic pretty effectively with other skills.

Everything is exploratory at this point. Any of the above may change before the Con.

About Me

Last and First Men

"In your day you have learnt to calculate something of the magnitudes of space and time. But to grasp my theme in its true proportions, it is necessary to do more than calculate. It is necessary to brood upon these magnitudes, to draw out the mind toward them, to feel the littleness of your here and now, and of the moment of civilization you call history." - Olaf Stapledon